Sony launches new £949 Walkman at the Consumer Electronics Show

Sony has launched a new £949 Walkman at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The catchily-named NW-ZX2 has a battery life of 60 hours and has a 128GB memory, or 256GB with a microSD card.

It'll go on sale in the next few months in Europe.

The original cassette Walkman was launched in 1979, sold 220 million units and has been through various incarnations including the CD Walkman, MiniDisc Walkman and Walkman MP3.

A Sony Walkman WM-BF65 portable audio cassette player, with FM/AM radio, dating from about 1989

Production of the cassette Walkman was finally brought to an end in 2010 due to a lack of sales.

A new generation of MP3 players, led by Apple, effectively killed off the need for a portable cassette player.

Digital music devices appeared on the market at the end of the 1990s with the launch of the groundbreaking iPod in 2001.

The device could store 1,000 songs, had a five gigabyte (GB) hard drive and used iTunes to download music.

Sony brought out its first portable digital player, the Network Walkman, in 1999 but the MP3 format it used didn't take off.

Since then it has launched a range of digital players - the A, S and E series - as well as a tie-up with Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

The new Walkman, which takes over from the ZX1, has Bluetooth and NFC capability, can store around 1,700 songs and has Wi-Fi compatibility but will take about four-and-a-half hours to charge.

It works off Android 4.2 software, so you can download anything from the Google Play store.

The new Sony product is aimed at the high end of the market.

The company even recommends pairing the Walkman with a USB headphone amplifier (costing £719) and a set of MDR0Z7 headphones (another £549).

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